diptych # 116 ~ glue
Tuesday, December 16, 2014 at 02:21PM 
2 trees ~ Canton, NY / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenFrom yesterday's entry, diptych # 115 .....
Featured Comment: Eric Fredine wrote (in part): "I'm ambivalent. It's an arbitrary timeframe and it often results in a hodge-podge of images with no strong unifying theme. On the other hand, I find the most useful way to differentiate between the truly worthy and the merely good is by looking at images in a collection.....
I agree with Eric's idea of looking at pictures in a collection. Not doing so does indeed produce a hodgepodge of images. However, IMO, even with such a collection, I have found that, in the case of my hodgepodge collection, there is a certain continuity, vision wise, in all of the pictures. That is, a continuity which mitigates the hodgepodge-ness.
That continuity was pointed out to me by several gallery directors upon the occasions of viewing my Bodies of Work ~ a sampler book - a book of pictures presented as collections of different bodies of work. The common comment was essentially that they all saw a very distinctive vision or picturing M.O. which was evident across all the various bodies of work. In effect, they believed that, presented with one picture from each body of work as a group they would be able to discern that the pictures were all made by the same picture maker.
ASIDE: IMO, I would venture to write that given a hodge-pod of images from Eric's work, I would notice the same thing - a continuity of vision, with very few exceptions, across all of his pictures. end of ASIDE
As an example (in my case), consider the pictures in my the LIGHT book. There certainly is a hodgepodge of referents but, to my eye and sensibilities, all of pictures are "unified" by my picturing M.O., AKA: vision.
All of which got me started on my best-pictures-of-the-year idea. My objective is to create a collection of pictures which will be presented in year-in-review book. Hopefully, that collection of very diverse referents will exhibit the same continuity of vision which, again to my eye and sensibilities, will glue the collection together as an all-of-a-piece collection.
Reader Comments (1)
I was going to mention the inherent cohesiveness resulting from the photographer’s distinct voice, but my comment was already approaching blog length.
I’d suggest the degree of consistency you exhibit is something of an exception. I’d also wager your body of work from any given year is representative not just in style but in the referents photographed. Your lack of attachment to any particular referent is inherent to your vision. You achieve cohesion in part through consistent diversity.
I am more single-threaded with respect to projects. To date my projects have been structured around referents (though there is nothing sacrosanct about that arrangement). As such, in 2014 there are mostly urban photographs of Vancouver. That subset feels like it is at least incomplete and possibly inferior to a collection curated from the broader set spanning a couple of years. The urban photographs are joined by three tidal photographs, which, I will say, in support of your point, fit in rather well.
When I created the sampler page (that’s what I called it) for the home page of my website I made it representative of the different projects and by extension the different kinds of referents I’ve photographed. I imagine you did something similar with your sampler book. Its just that in your case, it’s likely the book covering this years work might function equally well as a sampler.